Heroes of the Storm final Alpha phase incoming

Blizzard have announced that the final phase of the Heroes of the Storm Alpha is incoming.

With this final phase while we won’t see a lot on our end a lot will happen on the Heroes back end, Including the final hardware and integration with the live battle.net service.

The key points to remember.

Both the gold and real money shops will be closed on September 22nd.

After the shops are offline all 29 heroes will be unlocked.

There will be at least a week (very possibly longer) long extended maintenance where you will not be able to log in to Heroes of the Storm.

After the long maintenance all accounts will be completely wiped, it will be like starting new.

Any real money you spent will be refunded to your battle.net balance so you can rebuy anything of your choice.

If you spent real money during this phase of the Alpha you will receive an Wonder Billie Mount.

This is the ONLY planned account wipe ever. However Blizzard reserve the right to wipe again if needed. I emphasise this again, If everything goes to plan there will not even be a wipe when the game is released.

The servers will be intergrated with the live battle.net service, this means you will loose any friends on your friend list currently so backup those battletags.

Regions will be enabled which means if you are currently playing with someone from EU/Asia you will no longer be able to play with them (ANZ is linked with US so you can continue playing with US players).

Global play will not be enabled until the game is in full release. This means the region you play on is decided by where you set your battle.net accounts home address (ie where it says you live when you log into the battle.net website).

You will be able to use your live friends list and people from live games will be able to see/chat with you while you’re playing Heroes of the Storm.

This is a major step in the development of Heroes of the Storm and once on live hardware I expect to see the game progress into beta very shortly, perhaps with Blizzcon (this is only my thoughts, nothing official from Blizzard yet).

Personally I cannot wait for this to happen, a fresh start puts everyone on a level playing field and with no more planned account wipes we can go hard without the fear of loss. Remember this is the same thing that happened with Hearthstone and there was only ever the one wipe for it. While some may see this as an ‘advantage’ for Alpha testers remember that levels do not mean anything in the end as they offer no advantage over low level players.

Bring on the wipe!

Blizzards official announcement can be found here:

We’re gearing up to enter the final phase of Technical Alpha, and there are several items you’ll want to keep in mind as it approaches. This is an exciting milestone for Heroes of the Storm. Preparing for this phase includes an account wipe, and we’d like to give you a rundown of everything you’ll need to know.

ALL HEROES TEMPORARILY AVAILABLE

We’re shutting down the Heroes of the Storm Shop on September 22. At that time, you will be unable to make any purchases using Gold or real money. However, we don’t want that to put a damper on your latest matchmaking win-streak. We’re thrilled to let you know that while the Shop is offline, all 29 Heroes in the Technical Alpha lineup will be available for play in the free Hero rotation!

STARTING FRESH

The week after we shut down the shop, we’ll bring the Technical Alpha service offline for more than a week of extended maintenance. During this time, you’ll be unable to login or play Heroes of the Storm and we’ll reset everyone’s Heroes accounts. Once the Nexus is brought back online, it will be as though you’re starting fresh with a brand new account. This means that any leveling progression you’ve made, rewards you’ve unlocked, in-game Gold you’ve earned, and any purchases you’ve made with real-money or Gold prior to the wipe will be reset.

However, kindly keep in mind that following the account wipe, any real money you spent thus far during play testing has not been lost and will be refunded to your Battle.net Balance. Even though you’ll be starting fresh at level one, you’ll still be able to use the refunded money to pick up that shiny Bundle Pack, Mount, or Skin you might have had your eye on over the last few weeks. As an added bonus, anyone who made a real-money purchase using real money during the Technical Alpha will receive an exclusive Wonder Billie Mount!

This is the final planned Heroes of the Storm account wipe and monetary refund. Our goal is to avoid future player and hero progression wipes after we come back online, but we may still need to adjust or wipe player progression with future updates. Don’t worry, though, because we’ll give you ample warning if that ever becomes necessary. What we do know is that from the moment we bring Heroes back online after this wipe, purchases you make in the Shop will be permanent. So get those Heroes, Bundles, Skins, and Mounts with the confidence that you won’t need to reacquire them again.

IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE!

Once Heroes is back online, all current players will be moved to their home Battle.net region. When this occurs, a number of things will happen:

You will lose access to the friends list you built in the Heroes Technical Alpha thus far. But you will regain access to your normal Battle.net friends list that you share with all other Blizzard games, including Diablo® III, Hearthstone®, StarCraft® II, and World of Warcraft®.

Your friends in other Blizzard games will now see you as playing Heroes of the Storm and be able to communicate with you across games.

If you wish to remain in contact with friends you made to this point in the Heroes of the Storm Technical Alpha, take down their BattleTags (both the account name and unique ID number) now, and add them to your friends list after the wipe. Please note however, that some of the friends you made in the Alpha may have a different home Battle.net region than you do, so it will not be possible to friend them unless you are in the same home region.

Though a lot of what’s happening is on the backend and not immediately visible to testers, all of the work we’re doing on this transition is a major step for Heroes of the Storm. For testers, we appreciate your patience through this process as we move forward in the development of the game. Until next time, we hope you’ll enjoy queuing up with our entire Hero lineup starting next Monday, and we’ll see you in the Nexus!